Back in mid November we were passed some info onChristopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises via a "friend" of ours in P.R, they stated the final Bat-installment would be based on Doug Moench's excellent graphic novel Prey. Today our friends at AICN seem to confirm this. Nolan is currently applying the final touches on the screenplay with his brother Jonathan which is due for completion on Monday. Harry Knowles at AICN stated today:

"It seems that Chris & Jonathan Nolan and that David Goyer have been digging deep for the villain. In fact, Batman first went up against this guy in 1940 in the pages of Detective Comics. The word is, Tom Hardy is playing Dr. Hugo Strange, who has a bit of an obsession surrounding The Batman. Strange how common that seems to be in Gotham. In fact - it seems that Nolan and crew are exploiting that great PREY arc that was written by Doug Moench and illustrated by the great Paul Gulacy and Terry Austin - and ran from September of 1990 to February 1991."

"I'm fairly positive that this team is putting their own particular spin on it!"

Knowles also made a point to confirm in his Talk Back section that he was "shown proof" of this news. Our source was unsure if Hardy would in fact be cast as Hugo Strange as there was the age difference to consider and also the possibility of him playing the Night Scourge. The Casting process has been quite scrutinized by the media thus far with Nolan revealing a female Villain would also be involved. Back in August we learned that Catwoman & Talia Al Ghulwere involved at that point in the script development stage. Actress Teresa Palmer recently seemed to confirm they still are. Our source has pretty much always been correct and we have some more info which we will release soon, Nolan has always chosen complex psychologically driven characters over "super powered" & "physically superior" Villains and Prey's narrative fits perfectly into the natural progression of a very Frank Miller inspired origin via [Year One's] influence over Batman Begins & Batman the Dark Knight.